Cold Fire
by Tolakasa
Summary: AU. Sam knows he should be dead, not just injured. But he can't figure out how that happened, and Dean's not in any shape to answer questions. Sequel to Undertow. Part 2 of 4.


Okay, so "Undertow" was supposed to be a one-shot, then people started asking questions and all hell broke loose in my head. There will be two more stories after this one.

* * *

**Cold Fire**

Sam wakes to pain and fuzziness and a heavy weight making his arm go numb. He forces his eyes open, swears until the world swims into focus, and then tries to sit up.

Reflex catches Dean before his brother's unconscious form slumps to the floor.

Sam stares blearily at Dean, trying to remember, trying to figure out why Dean's fingers are clenched so tightly on the worn bedspread, why he's soaked in blood, why he passed out onto Sam's arm—

Never mind that.

Muscles protest, accompanied by bone-deep pain like nothing Sam's ever experienced, as he struggles to his feet (Jesus Christ, where the hell's his shirt? And why are his jeans so stiff?) and wrestles Dean's dead (not dead, just unconscious, he's _not_ _dead_, dammit) weight from one bed to the other. Sam realizes he doesn't remember coming back here. Remembers researching, stumbling over—something, leaving to go chase down a ghost, but that's it. What happened?

Never mind. He has to tend to Dean. Find the first aid kit. _God_, his brain's not working. Why is it so hard to think? This reminds him of summers at school when he'd work himself ragged and be unable to think for fatigue and pain the next day. But that only happened at school. Never on the road. When he was really tired, back at school, he'd wonder sometimes if it was karma kicking him in the ass for leaving.

Dean's heartbeat is steady and his breathing is even. He sounds like he's asleep, deep and exhausted and dreamless, and that reassures Sam. Dean doesn't sleep soundly when he's hurt. Sam still remembers the way Dean sounded after that heart attack, the way he took shallow breaths and muttered in his dreams and started at every noise.

Sam finally settles for pulling off Dean's boots and bloody shirt and scrubbing the blood off his arms. He finds out in the process that it's not Dean's blood; he can't find any injuries, not even a scratch. Dean doesn't move, doesn't resist, doesn't wake. Sam—well, his back is killing him, his legs are screaming, his fingers won't work, and his chest hurts. And he's really fucking confused.

Sam can't figure out why. He never hurts this bad after a fight. Bruises and scratches sometimes, a few strained muscles, the occasional broken bone, but a few hours' sleep always puts things right, even makes broken bones feel better. And Dean recovers quicker than Sam does, all _he_ needs is a couple of hours with the car and his music—

God, he still can't think. Maybe if he splashes some water on his face.

He staggers into the bathroom, absently glances at himself in the mirror, and freezes. His jeans are dark with blood. His chest is a spectacular mass of blue and purple, black and red, and the bruises are covered in gashes, deep ones—but not as deep as they could be, as they_ should_ be. They're healed—no, _half_ healed, just barely, new scabs stretching to keep the wounds closed. A couple are trickling blood, re-opened by the exertion of dragging Dean around.

His skin should be in shreds, not still attached to his bones. By the amount of blood on his jeans, on Dean, on the bed, he—

_I should be dead._

The memories are faint and scrambled; a hunt, something coming at him out of the darkness. The marks are too asymmetrical for clawings. An attack with something sharp, then. _Bad_. Sam knows enough about first aid to know that he should have bled out where he—

Cave. He remembers a cave—no, it was a tunnel, built out of the basement of an old farmhouse, some relic of the Underground Railroad. It had been a haunting, a simple salt-and-burn, and he—

Screwdriver. The ghost had taken a screwdriver to him, pinned him to the wall and stabbed him repeatedly, getting angrier and angrier when the screwdriver kept deflecting off bone, scraping across his ribs...

He should be dead. Why isn't he dead?

He looks out the bathroom door into the room, to the bed where Dean lies unconscious. Remembers Dean passed out on top of him, covered in blood.

Sam's blood.

Dean did this, somehow. _Dean_ saved him.

That's not strange in and of itself. It's not like Dean's never saved him before, Dean makes a fucking _living_ at it, but in ways Sam can understand, by jumping in front of him when danger threatens and force-feeding him and stuffing medicine down his throat when he has a cold. This—

This is new and off the goddamned chart, and that worries him.

* * *

"Sam?" 

The hoarse whisper jerks Sam out of his doze. He staggers over to Dean's bed, biting back a thousand swear words at the aches and pains that accompany the movement—strained muscles and pulling scabs and what feels like a vision-migraine but is probably just sleep deprivation. "Dean? You okay?"

"I..." Dean looks at him without ever really focusing. His eyes are glazed, sort of reminding Sam of the guy down the hall at school who was constantly stoned. "Can't..." His words are slurring, like he's drunk, but Sam knows he's not, he can't be. Dean wouldn't risk being drunk when Sam needs his help. "Need... car."

"It's _freezing_ outside, Dean, you can't—"

"Have to... can't sink... Need to sink..."

Sam blinks. _Sink?_ "C'mon, man, you're not a boat, you don't need—"

Dean shakes his head. "Gotta...sink... Car... Can't think, too much..." His hand clenches on the covers, his eyes close—and then they open again and he's pushing himself up, reaching out—

Sam grabs him and pushes him back to the bed. "You need rest, Dean. You _have_ to rest."

"Gotta sink," Dean says again, and slaps his hand against the nightstand. His whole body relaxes, so suddenly that for a wild moment Sam's afraid he's died, but then his breathing evens out, even more than earlier.

Sam reaches for his brother's hand, thinking only that Dean will wake up with a cramp in his arm if he lays there like that for long, but he can't pry Dean's fingers from the polished wood veneer, like they're glued there somehow. He finally gives up, and turns the light off over Dean's bed—

Is he imagining it, or is there a soft green glow beneath Dean's fingers?

* * *

The sound of the motel room door wakes him. Sam jerks his head off the pillow, searching the room for threats— 

Dean's bed is empty.

Sam's out of bed in a heartbeat, shoving his feet into his shoes, fumbling for shirt and coat and a flashlight, swearing at the pain that haunts every movement. It's supposed to snow tonight—has already started, Sam sees as he pulls the door open, the stuff's already ankle-deep, but at least that leaves him a clear trail to follow. Dean didn't even remember his shoes, he's in his _stocking feet!_ What the _fuck_ is wrong with him?

Sam finds his brother exactly where he expects: in the Impala. Dean's slumped over the steering wheel, his hands gripping it tightly. He's already shivering. The keys are in the door, not in the ignition, so Dean doesn't even have the meager warmth of the car heater.

He can't pry Dean's fingers loose. But if he can't get Dean back inside, he'll freeze.

Sam goes back to the room, grabs blankets and pillows, Dean's jacket and shoes and the least-smelly pair of socks, everything he can carry, and trudges through the thickening snow with it. He shoves it all into the passenger seat, where he can reach it, and climbs into the back seat. If he can just get Dean's fingers off the wheel, he can wrestle him into the back seat and bundle him up and get his toes dried off before he loses them to frostbite. It's mean, but the only thing Sam can think of is to hold the flame of Dean's lighter under his clenched fingers.

It works. Dean jerks awake with a startled yell, grabbing at Sam's hand—and then his eyes focus. "S-Sammy?"

"Dean, you can't stay out here! You'll—"

"Need..." Dean shakes his head. "Gotta sink... Need...car..."

"Fine." Sam grabs him by the shoulders and hauls him over the back of the seat. There's a long eternity of rearranging and accidental kicks and misplaced elbows, but he finally gets Dean settled on one side of the car and begins stuffing blankets around him. "I'm not letting you freeze to death."

"Need..." Dean's fighting the blankets—but, Sam notices, only so far as it takes to get one hand free, a hand that he flattens against the back of the seat.

"Whatever," Sam says, stifling a sigh. Dean's gone again, in that sleep that's not quite sleep, and Sam concentrates on stripping the soaked socks off Dean's feet. Just as he suspected, the toes are starting to turn blue.

Sam's feeling the cold by the time he gets Dean settled. He only entertains the idea of going back to the room for a moment; even with blankets, Dean could freeze. He's afraid to leave the engine running, though he's not really sure if he's more scared of carbon monoxide poisoning or of the explosion when Dean realizes that Sam let his car get stolen. With him in it.

Sam sighs, and starts another session of rearranging. The back seat hasn't been big enough for both of them in years, but cramped and warm is better than dead and frozen. And if Dean makes _one_ smartass remark, Sam'll—

He doesn't know. But he'll think of something.

He dozes now and then, but never a real sleep; the quarters are too cramped, even after they get passably warm, and he's too worried. A few times he cranks the car, lets the heat melt the accumulated snow off the windows and take the edge off the chill in the air. Once he stumbles through the snow back to the room to use the bathroom, thinking grumpily that if they were going to sleep in the car they could have saved the money.

Dean wakes up near dawn and looks confusedly around. "Sammy?"

"Awake?"

"Yeah."

"Good. You can get your elbow out of my kidney now."

Dean belatedly realizes he and Sam are in the same cocoon of blankets. "Dude, I thought we had an agreement about sleeping in the car—"

"It was share body heat or freeze," Sam snaps.

Dean looks at him, still confused. "What happened to the room?"

"I was going to ask you that." Sam tries to stretch, but the space is too confined and he only manages to give himself a cramp in one calf. "I woke up and you'd walked out here in your socks. In the _snow_. I had to use the lighter to get your hands off the wheel." Sam punches his pillow. "Can we go back to the room now?"

"Sure."

"Here." He hands Dean his shoes. Dean just looks at him. "In your _socks_," Sam repeats. "If you hadn't slammed the door and woken me up, you'd be missing some toes."

Dean doesn't talk much as they lug the blankets and pillows back to the room. It's still snowing. They're going to be here a few days. Maybe that's good. Maybe that'll give him time to force an answer out of Dean. "You going to tell me what's going on?" Sam asks, pulling off his coat as he reaches for the Tylenol so he can choke down four of them dry.

He turns around to find Dean staring at him. "You're hurt."

"Not that bad." It's a lie and they both know it. Sam's never hurt so much in his life.

Dean pulls up Sam's shirt before he can protest. "Son of a— I'm sorry, Sammy, I tried—"

Sam manages an intelligent-sounding "Huh?"

"I did my best, there was just so much blood, I couldn't fix it all the way—"

"Dean, you're not a doctor, it's not like—"

"I tried," Dean repeats, and his voice is small and broken. "I—" He stops, and pulls one of those maddening Dean mood-shifts that drive Sam crazy. "I need a shower. And some sleep."

Sam stares after him. Sleep? _Sleep?_

What the hell was he _doing_ for the last six hours?

* * *

Dean sleeps for a day and a half. 

Sam sleeps too, but not as much; he's still sore, and the night in a cold car didn't help his shredded chest any. He hikes through the snow to the store down the block a few times, for food and other supplies—cold packs, hot packs, enough Tylenol to destroy all the livers in Virginia. None of it helps. The aches remind him of college, when he'd overwork himself and pay for it for the next week. Jess always laughed at him, at his confusion, the same way she did when he griped about how long it took for a shaving cut to heal. Before he left Dad and Dean, those little cuts always healed within a day. Now, the scar on his pinky, the papercut that got infected his freshman year (to the tune of two weeks on maximum-strength antibiotics), mocks him.

He watches TV half-heartedly (Dean's right, daytime TV really _does_ suck), wondering what the hell's going on. He's never seen Dean like this. Something new? They've been through a lot this last year. Has it just finally made Dean snap?

Dad drilled survival into them so hard that even at Stanford Sam couldn't make himself leave the house without gauging the weather; Jess teased him incessantly about his ability to predict the rain. He's seen Dean half-dead with flu and _still_ not be so delirious that he walked into a friggin' _snowstorm_.

The third morning, Sam goes out for coffee and doughnuts, and comes back to the sound of the shower and Dean's empty bed. Good.

Dean comes out of the bathroom practically _bouncing_. It's such a radical change that Sam can only stare as Dean heads for the food, babbling about the possibility of a new job in Indiana and waxing poetic about the beauty that is a warm Krispy Kreme.

"Dean." Dean looks up with half a doughnut stuffed in his mouth. "Tell me what's going on."

"Nuffin."

"_Nothing?_ You've been asleep for two days and now— You're bouncing off the goddamn walls!" Dean looks at him blankly. "What's sinking?"

Emotion flickers across Dean's face, but too quickly for Sam to read. "What happens to a boat when it hits an iceberg," he answers smoothly, taking another gulp of coffee.

"I couldn't get your fingers off the nightstand. You said you had to sink. You said you had to get to the car to sink." This time he recognizes the flickering emotion in Dean's eyes: fear. "Dammit, Dean, talk to me!"

"There's nothing to talk about, Sammy." Dean's voice is cold and hard, the way it always gets when Sam pushes too far. "When can we leave?" he adds, changing topic so radically that Sam has no option but to answer.

"No time soon. Roads are iced."

Dean swears and parks himself at the table with coffee, doughnuts, and laptop, looking for their next job. Sam sighs and stretches out on his bed, trying to think of something to make Dean talk. Exhaustion and worry catch up with him and Sam falls asleep while Dean is watching an incredibly stupid movie that involves snakes and airplanes.

He jerks awake when he feels the mattress sinking under someone else's weight, feels fingers on his arm; he sits straight up and slams into his brother. "_Dean!_"

"Sorry. Thought you were asleep."

"So what, you decided to crawl into bed with me?"

He sees fear again in Dean's eyes, and it worries him. "You're developing an infection," Dean says softly. "The stab wound over your seventh rib. Left side."

"_What?_"

"It's getting infected and if you don't let me fix it it'll get worse and it could kill—"

"How do you know that?" Sam's been trying to ignore the increasing heat and redness in some of the gashes, hoping that sleep will work the miracles it always has. And he's been _really_ careful to not walk around without a shirt.

Dean rakes his hand through his hair. His eyes are dark and his expression is troubled and for a long moment Sam's convinced Dean's going to go storming out into the snow rather than tell him anything. "I—I can fix things, Sammy. Heal 'em."

Sam stares at him. "_What?_" he asks again.

"I can heal things. People. Injuries. It—" His voice breaks. "Dammit, Sammy, you're getting an infection and if you don't let me fix it you'll wind up in the hospital or dead and it'll be my fault because I didn't fix it right the first time—"

Sam chokes down his own panic and doubt in order to console his brother. "It's okay, Dean, it's not—"

"_It will be!_"

Christ. He doesn't believe this, not for a second. If Dean was some kind of psychic healer, he or Dad would have figured that out years ago, but _Dean's_ convinced and he's working himself into a panic, and given the events of the last few days, Sam's not entirely sure his brother's still sane. Fighting him didn't work. Maybe humoring him will. "Okay, Dean, okay. You—you can finish—fixing me." That makes Dean look even _more_ panicked. "What do I do?"

"Just. Um." Dean's gotten even _more_ uncomfortable. "Just lie there. Sleep."

"I'm not going to—"

"No. I mean, if you're awake, you—um—you usually fall asleep. While I'm—sinking."

The implications of that _usually_ scare him. If Dean _can_ do this, how long has he been doing it? "Okay." He lies back down. "You just—" What? _Do what you have to do?_ That sounds like the world's worst come-on.

Dean's fingers are light on his arm, as if he's afraid to touch him. Sam's never seen Dean this nervous. He's seen Dean angry, drunk, afraid, occasionally even happy, but never _nervous_. Not over him. "Shouldn't you—"

"I touch the cut, it gets exposed to more germs." Dean's voice is oddly calm, all business, like he's talking about a case. "I just need a little contact. Don't move."

"But—"

"_Sammy_." Sam shuts up and closes his eyes, because it's that or stare at the ceiling.

He expects warmth. All the lore about psychic healing mentions warmth. Instead there's ice—a gentle ice, if that makes any sense, cold on a summer's day, but ice nevertheless, following the veins to his heart, and then out again, finding the gashes on his chest, tiny icy needles stitching flesh together...

When Sam wakes up, it's morning, and he feels much better. Dean is in his own bed, asleep, but his eyes snap open as soon as Sam sits up.

Sam looks down at his chest. There are scars, of course, but faint and faded, and he can move without every muscle in his body protesting. _This_ is how he's used to feeling after a fight and a night's sleep.

He looks at his brother. Now he understands why everything hurt so much more in college. Dean wasn't there to sneak into his room and fix him. "How long?" he asks.

"You've been out about—"

Sam rephrases the question. "How long have you been able to do this?"

Dean won't meet his eyes. "Since I was a kid."

It takes all day to pry anything more out of him, to persuade Dean that he can trust him—which is ironic, considering how many times Dean's secretly patched him up, all the sprains and bruises and cuts that he must have healed through the years. Sam thinks he has every right to be mad, but one look at Dean and he knows how terrified his brother is and he can't stomach the idea of making that fear worse. Patience and calm reassurance, that's what it takes to finally make Dean tell him about the _sinking_, as he calls it, how he stumbled over it when he was seven and was terrified to tell Dad and secrecy just became second-nature.

"The heart attack—"

"Too much." Dean's quiet, distant. Even for him. "I guess there's things I can't fix."

"But—"

"When I tried..." He smiles, sadly. "I accidentally stopped my heart." Sam nods, remembering; the paramedics had told him that Dean had coded on the way to the hospital. "I spent the whole drive to Nebraska trying to fix it, but it—it just wouldn't fix. I hoped the car would help—"

"What's with that?"

"You can't channel the pain into something that's alive. It kills it." There's pain in Dean's voice, like he learned that the hard way, but Sam doesn't push. "The car— I've put a lot of stuff through it over the years."

"You can drive and sink."

"No. But some stuff, if it's not—not physical, I don't have to sink all the way. I—I just need some music and a long drive."

"You mean—emotional?" Well, _that_ explains a lot. That explains most of Dean's life, come to think of it. "You channel that into the _car?_"

"Has to go somewhere," comes the gruff response.

"You can _do_ that?" Dean nods, and Sam's suddenly _more_ uncomfortable, which he wouldn't have thought possible ten minutes ago. It's one thing for Dean to be able to heal _physical_ injuries. _Emotional_ has nastier implications. "Have you— Dean, tell me you haven't—"

Dean sighs. "Sometimes," he admits, like there's no point in keeping secrets now that he's told Sam this much.

"You fuck with my _mind?_"

"No! I mean— It— I just take the edge off, sometimes, Sammy, just enough so you can sleep! That's it, I swear! Mental stuff is tricky, it's not like physical, it's easy to get lost— I don't want parts of _your_ mind in mine!"

Nothing else would convince him, but that does. The _last_ thing Dean would ever want is to end up thinking like Sam. "Don't do it again."

"I won't."

Sam looks down at the scars lacing his chest. "There's never been scars before," he says.

"Sorry," Dean answers, choking on the words. "It— I couldn't finish it right the first time. All I could do was stop the bleeding, then get you back here. If I'd done it right you'd've never had them—"

"_Dean._" Sam goes over to his brother, sits down beside him. "I'm _alive_. That's the important part, right?" No answer. "We got the ghost, right?"

Dean shoots him a look. "You don't remember?"

"It's fuzzy."

"Yeah, we got him."

"Who—"

"Runaway slave, got caught by hunters; they decided to brick him up and leave him instead of dragging him back. Fine as long as the house wasn't inhabited by anybody too pale. I think you reminded him of the lead hunter." Sam nods. "Sammy—what are you going to do?" Dean asks quietly. He's not asking about the hunt or Sam's injuries or Sam's plans for the day, and they both know it.

It stings. All they've been through, and Dean thinks Sam'll leave over one more secret?

Sam grins. "Well, for starters, I'm not going to worry so much the next time you get hurt."

**_the end_**


End file.
